Life is already a major challenge and you have to creep up, despite my being relatively physically fit and considering I always watch what I eat and try to minimize you and get rid of you. No, instead of letting those things keep you in line, you have to find some insidious way to build up in my blood and won’t take no for an answer. It’s as if you say “You’re 30 years, congratulations, now you can either have me try to kill you, or you can starve for six months to try and get rid of me… but remember I will be back, watching, and waiting. If you think 186 of me is bad, wait until you get older, you’ll never eat fun food again!”
Remember this Cholesterol, I am going to stop hanging out with meat and eggs and get Metamucil, Oatmeal, Lipitor and Cholestoff to go after you, and your much nicer cousin HDL to keep you in line and you will keep getting your ass kicked and humiliated, you miserable piece of shit.
What’s gonna get you is gonna get you, bro. Try to keep the weight and BP down, eat your aspirin, keep looking both ways before crossing one-way streets, etc. And if clotting seems to be your likely fate, be grateful it’s not cancer. Or bears.
Hey I feel your pain. My doctors have to redo my bloodwork every time, because my cholesterol is so high that they figure there must have been an error. I’m not sure what the actual number is, but it is roughly 3x what a typical 35 year old must be at. However, they always get to the family history and when they determine I am Scandinavian, they relax and say not to worry, Scandinavians always have astronomically high Cholesterol levels…
Don’t blame yourself. I eat eggs and meat and all that other stuff, and my LDL is the lowest my doctor has seen for someone not on medication. My late mother-in-law had a nearly perfect diet for keeping LDL down, and she still had high readings. (She did live until 90, and had no heart disease.) When those ads say a lot if it is genetic, they aren’t kidding.
After I started taking metamucil as a digestive aid, my total cholesterol dropped by maybe 10-20 points.
However it isn’t clear cut. I don’t know if cutting your LDL via metamucil has meaningful health benefits. There seems to be a difference between cutting cholesterol levels, and improving health. The relationship isn’t a guarantee and there seem to be nuance between how they are related.
Bah!!! I hope it works. I guess it might just get the free floating LDL and Trigs but not the stuff built up… IANAD so I am not sure how it works, but if I see the numbers go down I will be much happier.
Yup, my doctor says “Cholesterol levels are as much about who you are (heredity) as what you do (diet/exercise)”. There are, unfortunately, some people who are just predisposed to high cholesterol and no amount of dry salad and marathons can prevent it. Moderate it, perhaps, but not prevent it.
Huh. I did not know that about Scandinavian ancestry and cholesterol levels. I’m 3/4 Norwegian, and I’m on a statin drug for high cholesterol. I tried to control it at first by living almost exclusively on salmon, salads, walnuts, oatmeal and olive oil, but the numbers didn’t budge a bit.
I think, at one point, they got my mom’s cholesterol down to around 280… but the rest of the time it was always above 300. And that was on a maximum dose of statins.
Heredity is a definite factor here (and thank Og I did not inherit my mom’s cholesterol… I got dad’s, which hovers around 140-150 no matter what I eat). That said, although my mom had familial hypercholesterolemia she managed to live into her late 70’s. High cholesterol isn’t always something curable, but it certainly is treatable and manageable. Eating properly, exercising, and keeping your weight under control is going to be nothing but positive.
Fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. It’s odd though since I am one of the fittest in my family and nobody else has had high cholesterol. My brother had it elevated once but it never came back. I really really hope dieting fixes this. I’m already used to it [the diet] and its not bad, some weight coming off really nicely and steady too (very fast) even though that’s not the goal, it can’t hurt.
I am envious of your cholesterol levels and eating what you want… :mad:
Depends. My wife took one which caused bruising. She changed drugs a few times until she found one that didn’t have this side effect. If you try any, and have issues, be sure to tell your doctor and try something else.
The point is, sometimes there’s a genetic component and you can’t change that - and it could be a spontaneous mutation if you’re the only one in the family affected. Or maybe not, but the point is that even if you do have a genetic component to your high cholesterol you can still manage the condition and improve your chances of having a long and relatively healthy life.
It’s not just a matter of being “fit” - my mom was actually underweight much of her life because her body didn’t properly handle fats and lipids and was pretty active for someone of her generation (she was a big fan of walking, even before it became trendy to exercise or “power walk”).
That said - I hope diet and exercise do the job for you. Eating properly and exercising have a bunch of other health benefits, too, so good luck with all of that.
Well… not quite. Due to food allergies there’s a bunch of stuff I’d enjoying eating, except for the ambulance ride to the ER afterward. We all got problems, right?
I lost a couple of small patches of hair just behind and above my temples. I didn’t know what was causing it until someone here on the board said that statin drugs can cause patchy hair loss.
I also developed muscle pain and stiffness shortly after I started taking the statin drug. However, I didn’t connect the events and went to a doctor or two to see what was the matter with me. Despite seeing on my chart that I had recently started statins, neither one suggested that this might be the cause. But after a year or two the stiffness went away on its own and hasn’t returned.